Cause Marketing

On 14 June, 2007 I posted on the problems I had with Mandarin Oriental’s cause marketing campaign featuring various celebrities and their cause of choice. Now, 4 years later, if anything the campaign is worse because it still does the same thing; a celebrity’s charity of choice gets a mention and a $10,000 donation, and nothing more. Here’s what I wrote back then: There are two kinds of celebrities in the world; those that are in the Mandarin Oriental ad campaign running right now and those whose agents are trying to get them in. It’s an image ad campaign for the 17 (now 23) hotels that are part of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. In it celebrities including I.M. Pei, Zubin Mehta, Helen Mirren, Elle McPherson, and Dame Edna-Barry Humphries are photographed in settings of their choice and they name their favorite Mandarin property. Dame Edna-Barry Humphries got to name two! (Now there’s a new set of celebrity ‘fans,’ with a few holdovers including Mirren, Neeson [see below] and...

Subaru of America is running third annual end-of-year cause marketing campaign called ‘ Share the Love ,’ which has helped the brand grow through the recession, increase its market share and decrease its incentive costs, all while generating substantial donations to five respected charities. The campaign is wonderfully simple. Buy or lease a new Subaru before Jan 3, 2011 and Suburu will donate $250 up to $5 million total to the ASPCA, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America, Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels, and the Ocean Conservancy. The owner/leaser determines which charity gets the money. Subaru even allows you to split the money between the charities in percentages you decide. In the event certain new owners don’t express a preference the $250 is donated equally among all five charities. In campaigns like this that benefit multiple charities, I've often advocated the ability to split the donation. Subaru also gets kudos on its website for pointing people to ways they can h...

Cute Ad. And Not Terribly Useful. Austin Minis are so doggone cute, when I see one in a parking lot I just want to pinch its little bottom. I feel much the same way about their ad for Meals on Wheels that runs in the November 2006 issue of Fast Company . We’re giving over some ad space for a needy cause, “to red light hunger,” the ad says, and that's good. The Meals on Wheels Association of America in Alexandria, Va., helps enable meals to the nation’s elderly in local cities and towns, and can make good use your donation. No doubt any of the nation’s dozens of Meals on Wheels affiliates, where the rubber actually hits the road, would say the same. But the ad strikes me as a one-off, and... if so... that would be too bad. I couldn’t find anything about a deeper relationship on either the miniusa.com website or at moaa.org. God bless Mini USA and their ad agency Sausalito, California-based Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners for thinking of a charity to support in this way, but I’d be...